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Category: Washington

Well, I’m back in the States for the foreseeable future (note, the future is more then a little blurry so trying to foresee it is figurative and the figure is all scribbles in the sand at low tide).Getting pulled from my site went remarkably smoothly and I think, all in all, I did achieve something during my two years.This isn’t to say that I wouldn’t have liked to achieve a great deal more, but in the past month or so before leaving many things finally clicked into place.I posted my Description of Service report in the last post if you want to see the ‘glorious’ achievements I have done.And, of course, since all my potential employers enjoy reading my blog they will gobble it up and contact me immediately.

When I got to Lusaka I was inundated with paperwork until minutes before I rang the COS wheel-bell and was somewhat frenzied until I got to the gate for boarding the plain to Addis Ababa.Well, things did not start off well for my journey home because the plane did not lift off until about three hours after it was supposed to due to fueling problems.This meant that we touched down about 15 minutes after the plane I was supposed to be transferred to left.The next flight to Washington, my next stop, didn’t leave for a day so this meant I needed to spend a night in Ethiopia.Fortunately there was another PCV (or actually I guess now we’re RPCV’s) on the same flight and we shared a room together in the hotel.The hotel was pretty descent and had good food if bad coffee (isn’t this supposed to be the home of the best coffee in the world?).Well, after a day spent mainly watching TV, we finally got in the air again and after roughly 16 hours sitting in fight and about an hour or two in Rome for refueling we made it to Dulles Airport at about 8:30AM (back in America so I need to start practicing the AM PM instead of the 0830 hours).

Customs went remarkably quickly and I was directed to the United Express ticket station to inquire as to when my flight had been rebooked to.It hadn’t. And to make matters worse, the flights to Bradley were booked until Monday.I got a standby ticket and the third wait began.The first flight at 12:20 was already overbooked and although I waited with bated breath, or at least as much of one as I could muster given how tired I was, no seats presented themselves.So then it was to another terminal for the next chance five hours later.It wasn’t looking good as there was a huge group of high schoolers’ coming back from some trip but when everyone got on the plane it turned out there were two seat remaining.I was just about to head to the terminal when those two people with the tickets to those two seats rushed up.And so it was back to waiting.Fortunately at this point the ticket takers realized that I was extremely tired and they were really helpful, so much so that they did some computer magic and got me a definite seat for the 10:30 PM flight.I slept on the seat for about an hour and woke up worried I had missed the flight.I hadn’t and was the first person on the plane.After about another hour I touched down for the last time, only about 34 hours late.And thus ended the two year, two month chapter in my life.